This really was the reality teevee election - trashy, substance-less, full of personal attacks and invective - truly a repulsive display. It is interesting to note that the primary culprit does not appear to be the actual reality teevee guy but rather Democrat Hillary Clinton, who according to a new study published by the Wesleyan Media Project, focused in an unprecedented way on personal attacks on her opponent rather than on policy discussion. Fully 60% of her messaging was in personal attacks - and only 25% on pure policy matters - versus about 15% on personal attacks by Trump and over 70% on policy. In this Trump is in line with precedent in the four prior presidential campaigns, and Mrs. Clinton an extreme outlier.How on earth she got a reputation for being a policy wonk is beyond me considering her abnormal focus on anything but.
What can we conclude from this? As someone who was turned off by the level of personal invective thrown at Mr. Trump as unseemly and trashy, and the lack of focus on policy as indicative of a lack of interest by the candidate in policy, this article gives a solid evidential basis to what was an unscientific impression. Policy matters - a lot - and while there is a place for pointing out the personal flaws of your opponent, winning presidential candidates focus on POLICY and not on personal attacks.
But the Democratic party seems more interested in screaming “RUSSIA” at the top of its lungs while fostering content-free “resistance” to the bad bad man, an appalling continuation of its losing strategy in the general.
